Home prices hit records in most U.S. cities

Home prices jumped to all-time highs in almost two-thirds of U.S. cities in the fourth quarter as buyers battled for a record-low supply of listings.

Prices for single-family homes, which climbed 5.3 percent from a year earlier nationally, reached a peak in 64 percent of metropolitan areas measured, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. Of the 177 regions in the group’s survey, 15 percent had double-digit price growth, up from 11 percent in the third quarter.

Home values have grown steadily as the improving job market drives demand for a scarcity of properties on the market. While prices jumped 48 percent since 2011, incomes have climbed only 15 percent, putting purchases out of reach for many would-be buyers.

The consistent price gains “have certainly been great news for homeowners, and especially for those who were at one time in a negative equity situation,” Lawrence Yun, the Realtors group’s chief economist, said in a statement. “However, the shortage of new homes being built over the past decade is really burdening local markets and making homebuying less affordable.”

Sales of previously owned homes, including single-family houses and condos, increased 4.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted rate of 5.62 million in the fourth quarter, the Realtors said. At the end of December, only 1.48 million existing homes were available for sale, 10.3 percent less than a year earlier.

In the Midwest, sales of existing homes rose 6 percent in the fourth quarter. The median price of an existing single-family home in the region increased 7.2 percent to $193,800 in the fourth quarter from the same quarter a year ago.

The median price of a single-family home in the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington region increased 6.4 percent to $250,200 in the fourth quarter from the same quarter a year earlier.

The most expensive markets were San Jose, California, where the median price was $1.27 million, followed by San Francisco, the Irvine, California, area, Honolulu and San Diego.

The San Jose area had a 26 percent increase in prices, the biggest of any region, followed by Reno, Nevada, and the Putnam/Dutchess County area, north of New York City. The biggest decline was in Glens Falls, New York, where prices dropped almost 12 percent. Cumberland, Maryland, and Elmira, New York, followed.

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